Rafael María Baralt: First Latin American in the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language (+birthday)

Baralt was the son of Venezuelan Colonel Don Miguel Antonio Baralt and Ana Francisca Pérez, a native of the Dominican Republic. His birth began with the process of independence from Spain and due to the political vicissitudes of that time of war, the Baralt Pérez family moved to Santo Domingo, where he spent most of his childhood.

His family returned to the city of Maracaibo and he was only 11 years old, but at a young age he had military activity and since then he belonged to the Flying Hunters Corps of the San Carlos Detachment.

Also as a teenager, he belonged to the Venezuelan patriot army and witnessed the naval battle of Lake Maracaibo on July 24, 1823. Then in 1827 he traveled to Bogotá with his paternal uncle, Don Luis Andrés Baralt, who was a senator to the congress, where he studied Latin at the Convent of Santo Domingo, public law and philosophy at the schools of San Bartolomé and Nuestra Señora del Rosario, until he obtained a bachelor's degree in public and civil law.

It remained in that capital of Gran Colombia, until 1828.

Baralt moved to Caracas. Already at the time of Páez's administration, he continued his military career, studied at the Academy of Mathematics and obtained the title of land surveyor, which means a person specialized in measuring the surface of land and drawing up the corresponding plans. He was strongly incorporated into the intellectual and cultural life of the capital of Venezuela.

On March 18, 1933, he married Teresa Manrique, a young woman from Caracas society, in the Altagracia parish of Caracas, and had a daughter, Manuela Luisa Agustina Baralt Manrique de Lara, who had no descendants.

Mazo News Team